An email from a source close to president Museveni’s state house reveals that, since October 2009 the Ugandan dictator’s people have been struggling to put together a real plan to deal with the accelerating anti-Museveni and anti-NRM feelings in Buganda. The people who seem to be the brains behind the plan include Museveni himself, John Nagenda, Tamale Mirundi and one Mafabi. Also involved in some meetings are Museveni’s half brother Salim Saleh (Caleb Akandwanako), David Tinyefuza, David Magara, Wabudeya, Kirunda Kivejinja, Moses Kigongo, Hope Mwesigye, Robert Kabushenga, Namayanja and others.
According to the email: “A lot of experiments have been made to see how to change Baganda either through fear or love. Nothing seems to work. For example, Museveni started a tour of Buganda after the Kayunga riots with plans to give out cash to key NRM people to bribe villagers. But the tour has been terrible from last year. Whether it is in Butambala, Kyaggwe, Bugere or Buddu, every place the president goes Baganda have been coming in small numbers and only demanding for the opening of CBS. Even when state house decided to show power by having mambas go with the president to Kyaggwe the people were not impressed and only put up more pictures of Kabaka Mutebi and Nnabagereka in their taxis and shops.”
The president’s people are sort of divided according to our source. Tinyefuza, Janet Museveni, Magara, Otafiire and sometimes Saleh, lead the group which wants to use straight force. This group pressured the president to force Kabaka Mutebi to come to the infamous “gun on your head” Entebbe meeting late last year, where the Lion of Buganda refused to be bought. The group also claims that Museveni did not go far enough in crashing the Kayunga disturbances. Salim Saleh is also on the second side with Kivenjinja, Kuteesa, Tamale Mirundi, Mwesigye, Nagenda and others. This “divide and conquer” group prefer to isolate Kabaka from Baganda by destroying Mmengo as an institution and confusing people until the 2011 elections are over. This team believes that if the Europeans and the USA are happy with the elections, which Museveni is guaranteed to win, Buganda will have nowhere to start. Museveni would very much like to use force but he also knows that Baganda youths have become too strong to let him win on force while America and Europe are watching. For now he is siding with the second team.
Our source adds: “Recently a plan was kicked off for president Museveni and Salim Saleh to soften the tone on Buganda and show respect to Kabaka Mutebi and leave people like Mirundi, Nagenda, other Baganda and even Tinyefuza or Otafiire to be the bad guys. That is why Museveni went to Kayunga (Bugerere county) and said that the county can never leave Buganda. This is the man who has been calling the county Bunyala for 6 months and stopped the Kabaka from going there without permission from his Sabanyala. The problem for state house is that again, most peasants had boycotted Museveni’s visit. The 400 or so people at the rally were 80% schoolchildren who were brought in by lorries. And that is why the crowd was never shown on any TV stations.
“Salim Saleh did not do any better when he went to Kalisizo (Buddu county) to speak the at the funeral rites (lumbe ceremony) of Tamale Mirundi’s father. Saleh used the opportunity to claim that he wished Buganda well and was involved in the tough job of bringing Kabaka Mutebi and Museveni to together. He even asked the crowd to pray hard for him. However, the peasants were not impressed at all. They insisted that if he wants their prayers he must fist deal with the problem of opening CBS. Chaos followed when Tamale Mirundi asked local NRM officials to stand up for introduction. First they seemed to be afraid to do so and when they did, people started to boo them and call them traitors. Then Tamale tried to let a senior NRM official from Kampala to say a few words. The people told him not to do so or they (the villagers) would walk away. That is when Tamale Mirundi turned to Saleh and said ‘Afande nawe obirabye, mu gombolola zino NRM telinaamu kalulu’ (‘As you can see the NRM has no votes in these sub-counties’).”
The email from our source also says that, as part of a state house propaganda kick off, John Nagenda started his bad guy activities with his New Vision column last Saturday. In his column, he trashed the Mmengo institution, suggested that it is irrelevant and claimed that it will die. Nagenda also arranged for the Banyankore owned Luganda daily paper Kamunye to print negative stories about Kabaka Mutebi. Kamunye is a sister paper to the Red Pepper which also recently printed another Nagenda planted story saying that the NRM government was going to take over Bulange. Red Pepper was originally sponsored by Salim Saleh.
